Your Blogging Staff

Contributing to this blog:
- "Dave" is Dave Barry, who is a humor columnist and presidential contender.
- "judi" is Judi Smith, who is Dave's Research Department, as well as being interested in men.
- "Walter" is Walter, a bone from the penis of a walrus.

judi, you're voodoo. I'm up late avoiding bed in part because we have a flying squirrel in our bedroom.

They're nocturnal, and cute as all getout (and folks, getout is cute, and all getout is fuggeddaboudit). But anyways, it's not really a quiet kind of squirrel. Smaller than a tree squirrel, and little bigger than a chipmunk, it's just kinda climbing around on our wood walls and wooden beams in the ceiling (over our bed, and sometimes it *almost* falls).

No biggy to him if he falls, because he's a flying squirrel. Outdoors, where he is SUPPOSED to be, he can apparently leap from the top of one tree and fly hundreds of feet to another tree.

In my bedroom, he can leap from, say, the wall, down to my desk. He's got a flat tail, instead of bushy, so he can steer in the air. It's all really cool, and it all really doesn't belong in my bedroom.

Well, my wife is much braver than me, and has been known to just put out some grapes for the squirrel and go back to bed.

I, on the other hand, believe that being loud is a good approach. Kindof like when I was a kid, and thought I heard a strange noise in the house, and my brother and I would walk around yelling to one another "I SURE HOPE SOMEONE IS IN HERE, BECAUSE I WANT TO PRACTICE MORE KARATE!" to which the other would respond "YES, OUR BLACK BELTS IN KARATE ARE GOOD IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS, WHERE A STRANGER WHO WANTS TO BE MANGLED IS IN OUR HOUSE, BUT WE MAY NOT NEED TO USE KARATE, SINCE WE HAVE THESE BIG GUNS" and the other would say "OH YEAH, THE GUNS, LET SHOOT THEM AND BEAT THEM!"

But anyways my wife is out of town, so at least I won't bug her with my yelling.

oh and if that doesnt work pulling the covers completely over your head will always protect you from things that go bump in the night as long as they aren't in a Stephen King novel or a flying squirrel.
Dang guess you are out of luck...Go back to yelling at the grapes

I was in the other room and I heard a blood curdling girly scream in the bedroom. I waddled in there as quickly as I could, considering I was 8 months pregnant at the time. My ex was near hysteria pointing up to the ceiling. To a spider. A spider roughly the circumference of a small pizza.

So, I'm scared of spiders, but the ex, well...he once tried to climb me like I was a tree when he found a spider crawling up his leg.

We argued for a while about who would kill it, but I knew I would end up doing it, so soon gave in. So...I got my pregnant self up on the bed with a big shoe in my hand. And I kept imagining it jumping from the ceiling and attaching itself to my face. Blah!

I got close and wacked it and somehow ended up leaping off the bed with great speed, if not grace.

I knocked the spider off the ceiling, but when the ex moved the bed to scoop it up and toss it, it was nowhere to be found.

He then spent the next two hours moving every piece of furniture in the bedroom...picking up every scrap off the floor. Removing the sheets...matresses...

Ok - I'm going to sleep. If I am consumed by really cute woodland creatures during the night, never again to love and laugh and look upon all things in a way that is not quite sane, I just want you to remember that I said that sucks and I wish it hadn't happened.

The zoo has wallabies and koalas too. I guess squirrels have an "ooh" factor as there aren't any wild ones here, or maybe the squirrels I saw there were rare ones. I didn't really pay them much attention...after all, they're squirrels.

This is absolutely off-topic, but I was just wondering how much are my two favourite circles of insanity are overlapping... so, how many of you have heard the h2g2 new series? How many of you have any idea what I'm talking about?

C-bol – having spent a tidy little sum squirrel-proofing the attic recently (apparently in addition to acorns, electrical insulation is way up on their gourmet menu) I can sympathize with your flying tree-rat dilemma. My suggestion is for you to eat the grapes and throw the bowl at the squirrel.

And to segue into the Very Blond Boyfriend Exotic Animal Story-of the Day: He had just moved to Florida and we had just moved in to our first apartment together when I got a distress call at the office.

“There’s a DRAGON in the bedroom!!!”
“What?”
“A dragon! It’s got horns and teeth and it’s IN THE BEDROOM!!!”
“Calm down. There’s no such thing as a…”
“EEEEK!!! It moved!”

Indeterminate sounds. THWAP! Rattle. Thunk. SLAM!

Turns out we had an iguana infestation. He threw a book at it, knocked it out, wrapped it in a towel and threw it outside. He’d never seen an iguana before and this was someone’s escaped pet. Fortunately it survived, climbed a tree and stared down at him until the apartment maintenance guy got there to rescue it and return it home.

No where on that website did I see anything about the Demon Dumpster Squirrel... the most evil and diabolical of rodents... this creature lives in the dumpster and will defend it's territory viciously...

I was thinking that Talk Like a Pirate Day needs a mascot. There is a one-eyed squirrel that lives in my backyard. How about we slap an eye patch on him and make him the mascot? What do you think? I want to call him Patchy.

SOmeone (no names) needs to get a life, if this is the best way they can think of to spend a Saturday night. No wonder Punky drinks.

We have a huge oak on the corner and consequently have squirrels all the time, though fortunately not in the apartment. Sadly, we saw two dead ones last week, one totally mashed and the other looking like it was sleeping on its side -- it probably took a glancing blow from a car.

penny: can't answer for anyone else, but I have no clue what you're talking about. But then, I'm a geezer.

Christobol, if we had a squirrel in the bedroom my wife would definitely be out of town with your wife.

A couple of years ago, I was dating a guy who had trouble with squirrels in the attic. This was at the same time that my parents were having the same problem. The boyfriend used live traps to catch them and would return them to the wild.

My dad used a BB gun.

Boyfriend got all preachy about that.

One day I was at boyfriend's house. He had gone down to the basement to switch around the laundry, and I heard a commotion which included a great deal of cussing. I went down and saw a squirrel sitting on top of the dryer, basically laughing at boyfriend. All around were shredded pieces of insolation and ceiling stuff.

A British friend always comes for Thanksgiving and usually brings a decadent dessert. Dessert because she's often running late and also thinks Americans are more qualified to prepare root vegetables and cranberries. (Did you know cranberries are native to America?)

One year she brought a delicious rich chocolate torte. She refused to have any.

Later she and her husband told me that she had been preparing the torte at the last minute. It was warm and needed to cool. She put it on her deck and went to get dressed. You know what's coming. A squirrel began to eat the crust when she discovered the little critter. With no time left to make something else or buy, she pulled off all the crust around the edge so it looked like it was supposed to be crustless and served us squirrel pit.